Sooren Gozmanian boarded a train at Michigan Central Station in 1942 and left Detroit to serve in World War II.

"And my best recollection is turning around, before I went onto the train, looking back, and through the big wire fence that was there, seeing my mother stand there crying like mad," the 93-year-old said in a video released Friday by Ford Motor Co. "I said, 'Mom, that's OK. Everything will be fine.' So I went to the service and I came back."

He's one of several people filmed inside the architectural icon for a Veterans Day tribute by the automotive company that announced its purchase of the train station earlier this year. The structure that towers over Corktown, and has been vacant and decaying since 1988, is anticipated to become part of a Ford campus used to study self-driving cars.

First opened in 1913, the station was used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to move troops to American forts and boot camps, said Detroit Historical Society Senior Curator Joel Stone.

“Michigan Central Station has a lot of sentimental value to people — all kinds of really happy memories and all kinds of really sad memories were made there,” Stone said. “It’s where people came to see Detroit for the first time, and in some cases, where people left and never saw Detroit again.

“Some children met their fathers, who were abroad, for the first time at this station, and in some cases, family members met the bodies of their loved ones there.”

An American Red Cross table is pictured at Michigan Central Station. Detroit Historical Society Senior Curator Joel Stone said the organization kept a canteen staffed during wartime "so soldiers can get a cup of coffee or a sympathetic ear."(Photo: Donated by the American Red Cross to the Detroit Historical Society Collection)

Michigan Central Station was used extensively in World War II in an effort to move troops as efficiently as possible, said Stone.

“The public was asked to limit their travels during wartime so that troops could get on trains without delay,” he said. “This was especially tough because it was hard for (citizens) to use cars, as rubber, gas and metals were being rationed.”

Service members weren’t just leaving Detroit — some enlistees came to receive mechanical instruction at the U.S. Navy Service School at Ford’s Dearborn Rouge Plant, according to the automaker.

Over 200 trains left Michigan Central Station daily during World War I, according to Historic Detroit, a nonprofit that researches Detroit’s historic architecture. By 1940, more than three thousand station employees served four thousand passengers a day, and trains would be in and out of the station seven days a week at nearly every hour of the day.

“The historic significance of the train station is awe-inspiring," said Rich Bardelli, construction manager at Ford Land, the company’s real estate arm overseeing Ford’s Corktown campus. "We plan to restore the building to its original luster and allow it to serve once again as a public space for the community to gather and enjoy, not only to reminisce about the past but create new memories as well."